1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for and a method of generating a gait of a legged mobile robot, and more particularly to a system for and a method of freely generating or determining a gait which can effect a continuous robot walking or locomotion for a long period.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional gait generation of a legged mobile robot, as taught in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. Hei 5 (1993)-285,868, various gaits in time-series data including that for walking straight or that for turning are designed through experiment using a computer. The data is then loaded to a microcomputer mounted on the robot which processes the data successively during walking to compute commands to robot joint actuators so as to effect walking or locomotion. Moreover, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. Sho 62 (1987)-97,006 proposes to prepare similar time-series data beforehand and to load the data to the on-board microcomputer which processes the data successively during walking. The second reference discloses interpolating the adjacent time-series data to shorten the time interval (i.e., increase the sampling rate).
Since, however, the time-series data has been prepared beforehand, the prior-art techniques fail to generate a gait freely on a real-time basis during walking such that the robot may change its stride or the angle of turning as desired.
In order to solve this drawback of the prior art, the assignee proposes in Japanese Patent Application No. Hei 8 (1996)-214,261, to generate a gait freely on a real-time basis such that the robot can walk at a desired stride or turn in a desired angle. The system generates, per walking step, gait parameters based on position (or displacement), velocity (or displacement velocity) and floor reaction force.